Bartolome de las Casas

Bartolome de las Casas (1484-18 July 1566) was Bishop of Chiapas from 13 March 1544 to 11 September 1550. He was a famous social reformer who conducted a lifelong campaign to ease the suffering of Native Americans, but he also advocated for African slavery to solve the Spanish settlers' extreme labor shortage.

Biography
Bartolome de las Casas was born in Seville, Castile in 1484, the son of merchant Pedro de las Casas, who settled in Hispaniola in 1502. By 1510, Bartolome had inherited his father's land and captives and became the Americas' first priest. He welcomed the Dominican friars to Hispaniola in 1511, and he soon came to share their abolitionist sentiments, coming to reject Taino slavery and rejecting the Spanish line that the Taino people benefited from slavery due to their adoption of Christianity. Although the Dominicans were expelled shortly after due to their radical views, De las Casas began a campaign for native rights back in Spain in 1515. In 1516, he delivered a written plea to the court suggesting that importing enslaved Africans could replace the rapidly declining Native American laborers. In 1542, his efforts led to the passage of the New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians, and De las Casas sent Prince Philip a copy of his classic A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies and issued a third memorial recommending the importation of African slaves. Las Casas went on to serve as Bishop of Chiapas from 1544 to 1550, and, in 1561, he published the History of the Indies, where he expressed his regrets about advocating for African slavery. He soon became an anti-racist activist, and, after Las Casas' death in 1566, his works were practically banned in Spain, while Spain's Protestant rivals published and republished his Account of the Destruction of the Indies in Dutch (1578), French (1578), English (1583), and German (1599).